Google doesn't always do special logos for every holiday, but in the case of Halloween, it's pretty consistent. Up today on the Google home page is the ninth consecutive Halloween logo it has run since 1999. Below, a look back at the past years, as well as this year's animated logo from Yahoo and a Halloween-themed home page from Ask.com. Google Halloween Logos 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 And 2007 in context of the entire page: Yahoo Halloween Logo 2008 Yahoo went for a fun animated logo, where two skeletons walking a skeleton dog are scare [...]

Related Topics: Ask: Other | Channel: Consumer | Google: Logos | Yahoo: Other

Sigh. As someone who produces a podcast -- and who has enjoyed searching for podcasts when going on roadtrips -- I don't get why podcast search isn't more supported by the major search engines. Yahoo Podcasts, rolled out with promise back in October 2005, now sports a message at the top of the page saying "Yahoo! apologizes deeply, but we will be closing down the Podcasts site on Oct. 31, 2007." Nice job, Yahoo. What, you can't even post a link to a reason why you're closing? No advice for what the podcast owners that actually promoted your service, about what they're supposed to do [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Search Engines: Podcast Search Engines | Yahoo: Other

Yahoo announced that they have agreed to buy Zimbra, an open source email, calendar and office applications software company, for $350 million. Of course, Google and Microsoft both have online/offline office suite applications. This acquisition may help Yahoo compete in that space. Jerry Yang, chief executive officer, said: Our industry-leading communications products, including Yahoo! Mail, are critical to the future growth and success of Yahoo. Zimbra's tremendous talent and innovative technology will help to extend our core Mail offerings, further strengthening our strong leadership p [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Yahoo: Business Issues | Yahoo: Other

Yahoo's new social job network: Kickstart from News.com has an excellent review of Yahoo's new social networking job site named Kickstart. The site is currently is currently a concept, which Yahoo wants to turn into a reality. The concept is to use social features to connect college alumni working at companies to those students who are graduating or have recently graduated. The social element helps tie together people who are currently employed at companies that may be able to help a fellow alumni or friend get a job at their company. Yahoo Kickstart's slogan is: Wish you had an 'in' to [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search Engines: Social Search Engines | Yahoo: Other

Google announced that it and many other computer and Internet heavyweights have joined together in the global Climate Savers computing initiative launched by the World Wildlife Federation. The idea is to improve the efficiency of computer hardware and data centers so that they require less power and give off less heat. Here's the Google Blog post about the announcement. The companies are adopting the most stringent EPA Energy Star requirements now and plan to exceed them going forward. The initiative is aimed at both enterprises and consumers and the participating organizations hope to offse [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Google: Other | Microsoft: Other | Yahoo: Other

Yahoo Experiments With Non-Yahoo Links On Home Page from Techcrunch reports that Yahoo is testing linking to non-Yahoo properties directly from their home page. Typically, the only non-Yahoo links from their home page are the advertisements. On May 24th, Yahoo linked to this Crunchgear article directly in the "Featured" news box at the top middle portion of the Yahoo home page. Yahoo told Techcrunch they are testing this out to see if Yahoo portal users will find the Yahoo home page more the relevant. Michael Arrington explained that Yahoo "will analyze the data and feedback from the test t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Yahoo: News | Yahoo: Other

Search Engine Journal compares Google's recently introduced "Hot Trends" database with the Yahoo Buzz Index. (Barry Schwartz wrote extensively about Hot Trends previously.) These tools, while fun and interesting, are also potentially important as business intelligence and data mining tools and increasingly useful to track the efficacy of offline marketing. Whatever their problems and challenges today, these tools will ultimately improve and become important to marketers as they coordinate "integrated" campaigns across traditional and Internet media. Yahoo has very self-consciously used its [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search | Google: Trends | Search Engines: News Search Engines | Search Engines: Word Of Mouth & Buzz Search Engines | Stats: Search Behavior | Yahoo: Other

Yahoo has announced that they will be closing Yahoo Auctions in the United States and Canada as of June 16, 2007. Yahoo Auctions will continue in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. Clearly, Yahoo has thrown in the towel when it comes to fighting eBay in the auction space, Instead, the company recently partnered up even more closely with eBay through a deal on eBay checkout. Here is the timeline of events: Last day to list an item: June 3, 2007 Listings will not auto re-submit after June 3, 2007. (This could mean that your listings may not be submitted 5 times) Last day to Bid/Buy: June 16, 2 [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Yahoo: Other

Today's article is a follow-up on our earlier review in which I looked at the capabilities and usability of the big three search engines' free site creation tools. The focus was on how easy each software product was for a non-technical person to master. The three tools reviewed were Google's Page Creator, Microsoft's Office Live Basics, and Yahoo's SiteBuilder. The original article, Free Web Design Tools From the Big Three: Trash or Treasure? spawned a flurry of questions related to the "SEO friendliness" of the products. Many small businesses don't have coders on staff but still wan [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Other | Microsoft: Other | SEO: General | Small Is Beautiful | Yahoo: Other

How many U.S. small businesses have websites? Is it 30%, 40%, 50%? Answering that question gets quickly into debates over the definition of a "website." For example, is a "landing page" or a "profile page" a website? Do the small business data provided by InfoUSA, Axciom, Localeze, TruelLocal (and now iBegin Source) constitute being online? Does being on Citysearch or InsiderPages or Kudzu or Yelp effectively substitute for a website? In a way it doesn't matter. The practical question is: can the business be found online and is that online presence enough to drive a call, a lead or a sale? [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Yahoo: Other | Yahoo: Search Ads